The Route as Briefed

University of Northern Iowa

The Route as BriefedAuthor(s): James TateSource: The North American Review, Vol. 261, No. 1 (Spring, 1976), pp. 16-27Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25117737 .

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A always expected to meet my father on the street, proba

bly downtown, because I imagined him wandering lost in a

daze for years across Europe, through Africa, up South

America, across the States, and finally some day standing at

a streetlight down at 10th and Magee wondering which way to go now. I knew we would stop and stare at each other,

drawn by some deep instinct that was a father and his

boy?no matter he'd only seen a picture of me one month

old, and I a bunch of worn photographs of him taken before

my lifetime. I knew he would be changed; the war and the

years of wandering would have stolen his handsome youth. I

was ready for that. I had aged him in my mind many times,

preparing for the fated reunion.

For all the continuing adoration in our household, I

knew almost nothing about him. I have no idea what his

interests were: only that he was kind, gentle, strong. I don't

know if he had any time for college or work between gradua tion from Paseo High School and enlistment in the Air Force. I knew he was Number One in his Flight School Class and achieved the rank of Lieutenant while pilot of a B-17 in the Eighth Air Force flying out of England. He was

up for leave when the crush was on with the bombing of

Germany. They extended the number of combat missions

just as my father was preparing to come home for Easter and

see his beloved wife and newborn son. That's when he was

shot down, the next flight. We were living with my Grandma and Grandpa Clinton.

Grandpa Clinton worked for the Federal Reserve Bank

longer than any man in their national history. He was a very

mild, level-headed man who refused to go to church with the

rest of the family. One night he sat up from his sleep and said to my grandmother, "Virgil has just been shot down over Germany!" He woke the whole family and told them.

Then he sat up alone the rest of the night and waited for the

telegram.

They never found him. The rest of the crew was ac

counted for. Some were wounded. Some were dead. And

some were in prison-camps. Roy Weaver, my father's best

friend and co-pilot, was in a prison-camp. His wife Mildred

was my mother s best friend. They had even been photo

graphed together several times by the Kansas City Star as two typical heroic and beautiful young war brides. Mildred had a

daughter, born about the same time as me, named

Joy.

My mother waited every day for information. Nothing came. Sometimes another telegram assured her that they

were looking everywhere; or perhaps he had now passed

from one status to another more grave (we never understood

or accepted these). There were constant phone calls to wives

or to servicemen home on furlough.

JAMES T?TE, when younger, was a Yale Younger Poet.

Since then a number of books of his poems have appeared,

including Absences and Hottentot Ossuary. He teaches at

the University of Massachusetts, in Amherst.

16 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/SPRING 1976



And then the war was over. No one in our house knew

how to celebrate the great victory for which everyone at

home had pulled so selflessly. We didn't feel like we had

won. But you had to act happy for those whose beloved men

did come back in one piece or pretty near.

Roy Weaver made it back without a scratch. He seemed

okay at first. My mother waited restlessly for the right mo

ment to ask him about Virgil. Why didn't Roy bring it up? The need was so obvious as to baffle my mother at his awk

ward reticence. We visited the Weavers three or four times

the first month he was back; Mildred seemed to accept the

situation and didn't know what to say to my mother.

At her wit's end, one day my mother finally broke the

idle chat and said, "What happened to Virgil, Roy?" Roy moved the coffee cup away from his mouth and onto

the saucer and said, swallowing, "Well, the plane was hit. It

was hit bad. Half a wing was on fire. Nobody was hurt but

we were going down. I said to Virgil, 'Let's ditch it.' He said

to go on, he was going to hold it until we were gone and then

follow. And that was it. I never saw him again. Mickey

Spoletto, our gunner, was shot while he was coming down.

Mark Janowicz was sent to a camp in Italy and got shot

trying to escape. Hal Ober, the navigator, was with me in

camp." He avoided looking my mother in the eyes. He took

another gulp of coffee, leaned back and said, rather dis

tantly: "I always asked everyone new when they came in the

camp if they had heard any news about Virgil." We waited for him to go on. But he didn't. He sank into

himself. Several minutes passed in silence when all present floated in their own rich war melancholy. Only now after so

much singing was it beginning to seem real.

"What did they say?" asked my mother.

"Nothing," he said. "Never a word. They never even

found the plane. ..."

Mildred Weaver called my mother two weeks later and

said that Roy had disappeared. He had gone out for a paper

five days before and hadn't returned. My mother and I went

over immediately and I played with Joy while Mildred wrung her hands and cried on my mother's shoulder, saying that he

had been acting strange ever since he had gotten back. And

that it had been getting worse. We spent a lot of time with

Mildred and Joy over the next three weeks until the police called one day and said they had found him. He had written

two thousand dollars worth of bad checks all across the

Midwest and West. He was in jail in Seattle and it wasn't

until someone finally thought to have him examined by a

psychiatrist that they realized he was a victim of total am

nesia. He knew not his name, his address, nor a single fact

of his life.

They sent him back to Kansas City where he was put in

therapy at the state hospital for several months, and then

continued as an out-patient for some time after that. He got a job at the Chevrolet plant and Mildred seemed to be her self again. We all went on picnics together to Swope Park or

Fairyland. Sometimes at home my mother would stop what she was

doing, ironing or making cookies, and take my hand. We

would walk out on the front porch and sit down on the

swing. "This is the day your father and I were married," she

would say. Or, "This is your father's birthday." Or, "This is

the day your father was shot down, three years ago today,

Tommy. You would have loved him. He was so . . . kind. So

handsome! Everybody loved Virgil." And it was true, everybody did love Virgil. Everyone in

my mother's family worshipped him and his loss was an en

during pain to them. His name was spoken so often at the

dinner table it sometimes seemed to me, who had never met

him, that he had just left the room. Nobody could believe he

was dead.

Roy Weaver knew my mother didn't believe him. The

friendship was strained because of this. There seemed to be

a terrific struggle going on inside of Roy one day when we

dropped by to see Mildred and Joy. We were surprised to

find Roy home from work. He shrugged off the inquiry my mother made by saying, "Oh, I thought I felt a cold coming on." Mildred was in the next room taking her hair down. We

sat down with him. He stood up and started pacing in front

of us with his eyes straight ahead at the wall. "You know,

Norma," he said, "Virgil almost made it."

"What are you talking about, Roy. . . .?"

"You see, I helped Virgil escape, the first night after

they had registered us and stripped us at the camp. I was to

start a ruckus with the guard and draw all the attention, risk

getting shot right there on the spot. Then Virgil could make

a break for it. I would probably get shot anyway when they made the connection that I had rigged it. As much as I loved

my wife and Joy, whom I hadn't seen yet, I would have laid

down my life to put Virgil back safely in your arms with

little Tommy. I tried, Norma, honest I did. I called that

guard every name in the book. The guard came toward me

all right; the trouble was, instead of engaging in any kind of

fight with me he just slammed me a good one with the butt

of his rifle in the back of the head, here, just at the top of the neck. I went out cold. I remember trying to fight my way back to consciousness: I kept thinking, I've got to save Vir

gil, I can't just lay here like this, I've got to pull myself up

and save Virgil! "When I came to, I had the sensation that I had just

closed my eyes for a second. I was in my cot in the sleeping room. Everybody was asleep. I couldn't believe it. Had the

whole incident been a dream? I looked over at Virgil's cot

and somebody was in it. At first I thought it was Virgil, but

this guy was bigger. I leaned over to Hal Ober who was

sleeping beside me and said, "Where's Virgil?" Hal looked

at me and said, 'He made it.' I was so happy I felt like

screaming, 'Did you hear that, boys? Virgil made it!' "

"He made it?" my mother asked incredulously. "That's what I thought all that night. I didn't even mind

my throbbing headache; I thought I had helped Virgil es

cape that nightmare. The next day out in the yard the guard who had hit me in the head the night before swaggered up to me and said: 'Your friend, the lieutenant, almost made it; too

bad.' Apparently our temporary camp was within a few miles

of Allied-held territory and Virgil was shot by a sniper within yards of freedom."

My mother sobbed into her handkerchief. Mildred came

into the room and could guess what they were talking about.

My mother tried to pull herself together. "Well then, why wasn't his body found. . . .?" She

couldn't finish.

Roy suddenly seemed elsewhere. "I don't know," he

said. "I don't know. That's a good question."

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/SPRING 1976 17



Roy disappeared again after that. It was the same story.

Wandering here and there aimlessly, a string of bad checks

through Illinois and Ohio, finally catching up with him in

Albany, no idea who he was. We had to take care of Mildred

and Joy during these times. Mildred herself always seemed

close to a breakdown; her nerves were in shreds. She

couldn't talk about the war. "Let's talk about something

else, what do you say?" she would say anxiously to my

mother if my mother happened to mention anything to do

with it. That didn't leave too much to talk about, since both

of their lives had been so thoroughly changed by it, by what

had happened to their husbands.

Joy, with whom I silently played in the next room, didn't

know where her father went when he was away for so long.

My mother told me. I had some thoughts about Joy's father,

Roy. I thought he probably forgot everything and went crazy

because he knew where my father was or what had happened to him, and for some reason he couldn't tell us, and that was

driving him crazy and making him forget who he was. I

knew he must be suffering, but I thought it was cruel of him

to not tell us the truth. My mother and I secretly feared that

he wasn't telling us the truth because the truth was too aw

ful.

After he had been brought back again and gone to the

hospital for a while and had a new job and seemed to be

acting like a normal person, a good husband and father, we

started seeing them again. It always took us a little while to

get back to visiting them right after Roy came back, because

we knew it must be hard for them. Mildred was very ner

vous. Joy was getting old enough to see that her father

changed a good deal. They could tell when he was going to

go off, but they didn't know how to stop him, were afraid to

try. I spent a lot of time now going through boxes of old

photographs of my mother and father as young lovers in high

school, Virgil in a baggy grey flannel suit and a white shirt

open at the neck, his arm around my mother. They appeared to be very happy, very much in love. Then there were wor

ried tender photographs of train partings, my mother and his

mother kissing him on each cheek for the picture Mr. Woods

was taking, shaking on his wooden leg. Then many hand

some photographs of Virgil in flight school, standing proud with his classmates; and later his flight crew, they looking at

him with personal pride and respect. Virgil working late at

night in his office on the base, serious paperwork, his

leather jacket on, his hat, looking up. My mother had an

album the service had given her, and she filled it with clip

pings and mementos: napkins from dances at the base when

he was stationed in Oklahoma at first and my mother lived

there with him, just pregnant with me. Anything pertaining to their lives, even a grim list of his classmates on which she

had written in small script the fate of each young man?

dead, prison camp in Italy, prison camp in Germany,

wounded, home safe. Out of helplessness more than bitter

ness she was comparing her fate to others. Was she the only one whose husband was lost . . .

just not found? Had the

War Machine cranked down, disassembled itself and trans

formed the demons of death into babyfood and fast cars

without uncovering a trace of Lieutenant Michael Virgil Woods or his B-17? Had they been just swallowed up by the

heayens; had the friction between death and desire erased

him?

There were the love letters, too, including excited

fatherly remarks about little Tommy, and how Easter was

coming soon and he would be home at last. I tried to im

agine his voice as I read these. When I stared at the pic

tures and read the letters at the same time I could see his

mouth move. And I was confident he would find us, no mat

ter if he was like Roy and had forgotten his name, had for

gotten where we lived. He would stumble on and when he

found us then it would all come back to him and we would

tell him how long we had waited for this day. The older I got, the more I was convinced Roy Weaver

had the secret of my father's disappearance. By the time I

was six I was determined to get it out of him myself. My

mother had given up hope of ever getting Roy to talk sense.

It wasn't fair to question him, anyway, because he was crazy

and suffered terribly himself. We didn't see them as much

now. They had moved to another house and it was on the

other side of town. The parents made plans to get Joy and

me together because we still thought of each other as

friends.

I didn't know how to act around Roy. If I forgot he was

sometimes crazy, then he did something to remind me and I

was embarrassed. And I didn't think it was nice to treat him

as if he were crazy, even if I had known how to treat a crazy

person. And besides, you didn't notice it most of the time.

He didn't seem very crazy, just unnatural in the way he

would look at me sometimes, as if (I thought always) he

wanted to say something.

One time he was looking at me so intently and yet not

saying anything that I finally broke the silence and said with

uncharacteristic bravery, "Go on, what were you going to

say?" He shook his head and said, "Oh, I was just thinking

how proud your father would be of you. You look quite a lot

like him, you know."

"I might not now," I said enigmatically. "What do you mean by that, Tommy?" he asked.

"I mean he might look much different now, he would be

older."

"Yes." We sat there in silence for a few moments and

then he said to me, "Do you think about him much,

Tommy?"

"Yes," I said.

"What do you think?"

"I think I'll meet him downtown some day," I said.

My mother and Mildred came back from shopping and it

was time for us to go home. That was the most I had ever

talked to Roy. I was more convinced than ever that he was

hiding something from us. I told my mother on the way

home. I said, "Why don't you just make him tell you the

truth? Can't you force him?" She said she couldn't because

Roy was sick and wasn't responsible for what he said.

Roy called that night and said he was going to tell her

the truth. The truth was awful and he had wanted to hide it

from her. Virgil had made him promise that he would never

tell. The truth was, he said, that Virgil had lost both arms

and legs and was taken care of by an old farm woman some

place in France, he didn't remember where.

We didn't see the Weavers after that. A few years later

they moved to Texas. Every now and then my mother would

say, "Remember Mildred Weaver?" And I would say yes.

"They say he's just as bad, poor Roy."




^Y4&I ?^

An 1950 my mother was 27 and I was exactly 20 years younger. For the most part we lived those first seven years

with my grandparents on 47th Street Terrace, between

Woodland and Garfield, in the center of Kansas City. My three aunts, Connie, Irma, and Marty, and my Uncle Everett

lived there, too, in various stages of maturity. We were a big

happy family and loved one another equally; there were no

power struggles, each had his own place.

My real father, Virgil, was reported missing on a bomb

ing mission over Stuttgart in April of 1944, five months after I was born. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Woods, who were

caretakers at the Kansas City Zoo and lived in a shack on

the premises there, both died of grief before the end of '44. We had lived with them there at first, Fm told.

After two years of lonesome mourning and waiting, my

mother started to date a little. She dated a Catholic by the name of Bud Tie, dark-haired and handsome with rosy

beer-warmed cheeks and a slightly devilish smile. They went out once a week for the next four years, and sometimes

he would even come over and sit with us around the radio. It

was generally assumed they would marry some day. They were engaged on and off.

My mother surprised us all one day by announcing at

dinner that she had just married this guy by the name of Joe

Quincy. We had barely met him! To our knowledge she had been out three or four times in the past two weeks with him

and we knew nothing about him, except that he was three

years younger than she, was quite handsome by the stan

dards of the day, and was employed as a lineman for the

Bell Telephone Company.

Then there was a lot of sudden hustle and bustle. Boxes

were packed and runs were made up to the new house. The

new house was a little four-room white-shingled green

shuttered bungalow about eight blocks away from where we

were, over on 49th Street, near Prospect, on a steep hill.

My mother hadn't bothered to find out much about Joe

Quincy before she married him. In that first couple of weeks

Joe and I ended up alone in the house several nights when

my mother worked late at the chrome fixture company. The

first night I was alone on the floor of my room lining up a

hundred lead soldiers in impeccable rows when Joe came in

and knelt down beside me. He smiled warmly but tensely, and said, "Ever seen one of these before, Tommy?" I looked

down and there was a gun in his hand. "It's a .38," he said.

I didn't know what to say. "Here, go ahead, hold it," he

said, putting it out next to my hand on my knee.

"Is it loaded?" I asked, stalling. "Do you want it to be?" he said.

"No," I said.

It was loaded and now he took the bullets out and put them on the floor by my cannons.

"It's heavier than I thought," I said.

"Go ahead and pull the trigger," he said.

"At what?" I asked.

"At anything," he said. "Shoot your lamp out."

"All right," I said. And tried to hold the gun up with my one hand steady enough to take aim at my lamp.

"You would have missed it," he said.




"How come?"

"Because you were shaking. Use both hands this time.

Hold it out in front of your chin. That's right." I admit I thought it a bit peculiar to have my brand-new

stepfather teaching me to shoot the light out of my room with

a .38. Though it could have been easily explained. All the

men I knew hunted, were proud of their rifles. Joe didn't

leave much room for interpretation, though. He started tel

ling me about crime and gangsters in Chicago. He didn't say

exactly what he had done there, but it was strongly implied

that he had used that pistol on more than one occasion and

even that it was "not too safe" for him to be back there right now. There was a certain amount of pride in the way he

related the picture. I didn't tell my mother right away, but I was certainly

curious to know if she was aware of this man's past, if she

knew about the gun, if she approved. Then Joe and I were

again alone for a few hours one evening and it was I who

brought him around to this Chicago hood world. He seemed

reluctant to talk about it again. I asked him if he belonged to the Mafia, and he said "No no no," very irritably. He

kept opening beer bottles and pacing up and down the living room where I sat on a low green chair and stared up at him,

trying to understand him.

Then we could hear my mother's high heels coming up

the two flights of concrete steps, weary from late night work.

Joe looked at me and said "Go into your room," very

brusquely. I had never seen him like this before, but then

again they had only been married a few days short of a

month.

I did as I was told, resentfully, for I wasn't used to this

treatment in the old house. I stood my soldiers up all around

me. They had me completely surrounded. I didn't stand a

chance. So I closed my eyes, held my breath, and flew in a

spastic explosion, all four limbs in a mad destructive whirl.

There was yelling, a real vicious fight going on out

there. He was yelling "We're going!" And she was yelling

"We're not going!" over and over and I could imagine that

he was giving her what I called "Indian rub-burns" because

she was screaming "Let go of me! Let go of me! You're hurt

ing me!" And I was so nervous I didn't know what to do, so

very quickly I set up all the soldiers around me again and

instantly demolished all hundred of them with a crazed run

ning somersault.

Then she screamed in horror and pain, "Tommy, come

here!" and I scrambled to my feet and plunged through the

door into the livingroom. Both of Joe's bare forearms were

gushing blood all over his clothes and the divan and the

coffeetable, the throw-rug and the hardwood floor. I had

never seen so much blood. I thought he was a goner. Joe

was standing there, shocked, holding his arms, but delight

ing in the disbelief and reverence and horror on both of our

faces. I had to call the ambulance while my mother got some

clean rags to tie around his arms so he wouldn't lose so

much blood. Joe was sputtering to himself in a delirium of

self-pity, neither resisting nor assisting my mother. He was

taken off and sewn up and was in the hospital for a couple of

days. Before the ambulance came my mother was sure to pick

up the knife from the pool of blood on the floor where it was

almost hidden. She hid it on the back porch just in time.

There were questions, but I don't remember the story we

finally agreed on. I stayed home and cleaned up the blood

while she went to the hospital with him. I barely knew what

was going on?that is to say, what had happened.

My mother came home around midnight and I was still

up. I told her I couldn't sleep until she told me what had

happened. She said Joe had tried to kill himself because he was mad at her. That seemed pretty extreme to me, so I

inquired further. She said he wanted to move out of this

house right away, like tomorrow. And that she didn't want

to, she wanted to stay right there. She had her job and I had

to go to school.

When Joe came home from the hospital he found out he

had been fired from his job with Bell. Now he was mad, he was sulking all the time. I tried to stay out of the house as

much as I could when I was not in school, until my mother

came home at 6:30. And even then I dreaded it. They yelled all the time. I stayed in my room, trying to lose myself to the

soldiers.

I knew my mother was afraid, but I also knew she didn't

want to alarm me. Then one day Joe's parents arrived from

Detroit to stay with us for two weeks. I'd never seen people

like them before. They were completely dissipated by al

cohol. When I sat down for my cereal at 7:15 they were both

there at the breakfast table with a fifth of bourbon and sev

eral ashtrays overflowing with butts. Repulsing me with their

foul breath, they'd pat me on the back and say, "What do

you say there, little boy?" Then at dinner table at night old Mr. Quincy, barely

able to hold onto the bottom of his chair to keep from rock

ing out, would start up with, "Joe thinks you ought to come

on back up with us to Detroit, Norma. Pretty nice town."

"Maybe later," my mother would answer vaguely, con

centrating on her meal. I wasn't saying a thing. Joe was

doing all he could to hold back his rage against the world.

My mother and I were tremendously relieved when Mr.

and Mrs. Quincy finally drifted away. Nothing was real

while they were there. The haze they were in suffused the

whole house and our way of seeing everything. Joe was sup

posed to be looking for a job, but my mother didn't believe

he was. He was up to something. Out all day, with his .45

or .38, depending on his mood. From the fights I overheard

I don't think he was pulling jobs so much as making

contacts?of some kind, for something. Several weeks went

by and Joe was visibly changing before our eyes. They didn't

seem married so much as mutually trapped.

Joe taught me how to clean both of his guns, and this

was something I enjoyed. It was one of those exclusive joys,

where I knew I was the only kid in my third-grade class who

could disassemble and clean a .45 automatic. Now that was

a heavy pistol; I had to use two hands to hold it up steady and pretend to blow out all the lights. Joe gave me a bullet

for it which I could carry around in my pocket and fiddle

with, my forbidden secret.

One night they were really going at it. It was late. I had

had the lights off for two hours but couldn't sleep. I didn't

want to miss anything; and besides I was afraid for all our

lives. The voices rose to a more and more frantic pitch and

finally there were four terrible explosions at split-second in

tervals. Joe had told me that gun would leave a hole in a

man's back as big around as a half-gallon can of peaches. I must have had a moment's thought before running out

there.




"Get back in your room, Tommy!" my mother yelled at

me, with her hands clutching at her own face in terror.

Our neighbors called the police, not because they were

afraid someone might have been shot but because the noise

bothered them. They were old. Again there was this ridicu

lous attempt to hide the evidence quickly. Rugs were moved

to cover up the holes blown into the floor. Somehow my

mother lied herself out of this one, too, with her innocent

endearing face. Joe hid in the basement.

The next day I was sent down to the hardware store on

Prospect to buy some plastic wood in a tube, and I got to

spend three or four hours that afternoon and evening filling

up the holes. It was still pretty conspicuous when I got

done, but at least you wouldn't stub your toe in one of the

holes.

I don't know if my mother had told her family what was

going on. Perhaps she had told Connie, the sister closest to

her in age. They were very close and gave each other advice

in difficult situations. Connie and my mother had gone to

Acapulco on a spree for six weeks with the government

money my mother got after they gave up looking for my

father and declared him dead.

But I think now she was really afraid to involve anyone.

Joe was a desperate man and had to be handled very cau

tiously lest he tear into you, himself, or the floor with one of

his deadly weapons. I heard them up talking almost all one night; I wasn't

trying to stay awake and eavesdrop. I was tired and their

voices were a constant whisper all night, no yelling this

time. I got up drowsier than usual at seven and was about to

brush my teeth when my mother came into the bathroom and

said to me, "Tommy, you're not going to go to school today." I failed to delight in this announcement the way a respecta

ble seven-year-old should have; I knew something was up,

probably something big. I was given a quick bowl of cereal and then told to make

myself useful by loading the car, a 1949 black Ford. My mother stuffed clothes and even my soldiers and towels and

sheets into the trunk in a hurry. We were on the road for

Detroit by eight, without so much as a goodbye to my

grandmother or anybody.

My mother did all the driving. I sat up front with her and

read the maps while Joe lay on the floor in the back seat

under a rug. Every time we saw one of those black and white

1950 Ford police cars on the highway my mother and I bit

our lips and she hissed out of the side of her mouth, "Stay

down," to Joe in the back. We ate in little roadside drive

ins, dusty root beer stands in small-town central Iowa; then

into Wisconsin, which was more beautiful, and I remember

almost thinking we were on vacation. It was hard to think

that for long, because Joe was back there asking us if it was

clear and where we were and how much longer till Detroit.

When we got to his folks' place in Detroit, Joe rushed

out of the back seat and up the walk to the door. My mother

and I sat in the car at his instruction and waited. He was

back in a couple of minutes, looking panicked. "We can't stay here," he said, getting back in the car.

"The place is being watched." His parents came out on the

porch and woozily waved at us, as though we were leaving after a long visit. We were all tired and dirty and the car

was littered with potato chip bags and Dixie cups.

"What about Tommy?" my mother asked.

"He can stay here."

"I'm not staying here," I said meekly. "All right," Joe said, "but we've got to get moving. I

don't feel comfortable out front here, this is the first place

they'll look when they hear I've hit town."

My mother started the car and we took off. Mr. Quincy was hanging onto the porch railing and wishing us well.

My mother and I were back in Kansas City three days later. At school my friends said, "You been sick?" "No," I

said, "I've been on a vacation." "Where to?" they asked

disbelievingly. "Detroit," I answered proudly.

My mother and I stayed in the new old house alone. I got a pet alligator and two birds from Japan. It was quiet now. I

missed my old chums in the neighborhood down on 47th at

my grandmother's, but I could walk the eight blocks several

times a week when I got lonesome up on our hill where

mostly old people lived.

Occasionally one of them would ask, "How's your new

dad?" And I'd have to answer, "I don't know." I didn't real

ly know what had happened to him. We were all hysterical for a couple of days hiding around at Joe's old hoodlum

friends' in Detroit. Then they got him, the police, but I don't

really remember how.

In fact, for many years I didn't even know what for.

Then my mother's youngest sister, Marty, told me one night.

Marty was only three years older than me, 17 years younger than my mother. "What ever happened to Joe?" I asked her

years later.

"He got the electric chair," she said matter-of-factly. "What for?" I asked.

"Didn't you know, Tommy?" she said, "Joe killed his

first wife."

IVA y mother and I took pride in our little house on 49th. I started a vegetable garden in the backyard. I had five rab

bits in a hutch. After a year my mother quit the chrome

fixture company and took a job with Encyclopaedia Britan

nica as a secretary. She still had to work late several nights a week, after dark. She was my best friend, so I was glad

when she came up the hill. I would walk or run down the

hill to tell her something. In the summers we went swimming every day we could

at the huge Fairyland Park public pool?just take the bus

straight out Prospect to 75th, the end of the city then. But it

was crowded all the same. After the epidemic in 1952 and

'53 it should have been rechristened Polio Public Pool. That

never stopped us. We came early so my mother could find a

place for her beach towel. We both would be barbecued by three, darker and darker as the summer rolled on. I in the

water, she on her beach towel.

And when she got her week off in July we took the bus

down to Lake Tannycomo in the Ozark regions of southern

Missouri. We would rent a little cabin and spend every min

ute of sunshine on the beach or out on an inflatable raft,

dozing and soaking up the scalding reflection off the water.

One day my mother and I both fell asleep on our separate rafts and floated down the enormous lake ten miles before I

woke and yelled to her. We laughed about that for a long time.




At night there was the Barefoot Club. That was a little cellar tavern with sawdust on the floor (to encourage bare

feet) and a rocking good jukebox sending out "ABC Boogie" for the young happy people to dance to. I danced quite a bit

myself. My mother sometimes met nice men and would sit

there in a booth drinking a few beers. Connie came with us

once and they both met men they liked, though I don't know how seriously. I do remember that both of their men per

sisted after everyone had returned to Kansas City. My mother and Connie would talk on the phone about them and

say how disgusting they were and then laugh like crazy, and

then double-date once in a while.

We lived on in that house for five years until I was 12. One day I traded my sizeable collection of lead soldiers for a

cheap set of plastic spacemen and regretted it immediately. I never did make too many friends in that neighborhood.

The old lady next door who called the police when Joe shot off his .45 went crazy one night and carved up my five rab

bits. I discovered them the next morning, parts hurled sav

agely all over the backyard. I knew she had done it, and

though I was afraid of her I pulled in my chest, crossed my fingers, and rang her doorbell. She pretended not to know

why I was there. I finally found my voice and just as I found it broke into tears, grumbling: ". . . You killed my rabbits . . .

you killed my rabbits. . . ."I had her there, she couldn't

lie in the face of such a passionate accusation as I deli

vered. Yes, she said, she had killed my rabbits in the night.

They were getting into her garden and eating all her carrots.

That was a lie: the smartest and strongest rabbit in the world

couldn't have broken out of that hutch. She had killed those

rabbits just because she thought they might some day break out and eat a carrot or so from her garden.

I saved my money, my allowance and the bits I made

raking leaves or shoveling snow, and in a month I was able

to descend upon a pet shop and purchase a dozen guppies, three black mollies, three zebras, three neons, one pencil

fish and one hatchet fish. I did poorly in school. My fourth grade teacher

suggested I might be mentally deficient. My mother had to take time off from work and pay many visits to her. I was

always apprehensive about these meetings. They made me

nervous. One time Mrs. Webb suggested to my mother and

the Principal that I be taken out of school and placed in a home for children like me. My mother was outraged and told

the teacher off right there in front of Mr. Thomas, the Prin

cipal, and me. I fainted, right onto the floor. My mother

exploded all the more. From my coma I could hear her furi

ously yelling, "See what you've done to him! Why, you shouldn't be allowed to teach children!" The Principal con sulted my test scores and took our side against Mrs. Webb,

suggesting that possibly she had "the poor child" so

frightened he wasn't able to perform. But the real truth was, I wasn't interested in school. I wasn't a silent genius; I was

just a daydreamer. The move away from my grandmother's old neighborhood

of 47th Street, where I had so many friends, had more and

more affect on me as time went by. I began to see that I

wouldn't make new friends as good as they had been. Our

lives had been magical then; a dozen of us in a four year

age-span had lived together day and night in the streets and

in the woods in back of our houses, through all the seasons

of the year for seven years. I could go back, but it was

different now: some of them were already in high school, some had moved. By habit, as much as

anything, solitude

became a state of mind.

We spent several nights a week down at Johnny's Bar

and Bar-BQ, around the corner on Prospect. We knew

Johnny and he looked after us. I became the house

shuffleboard champion when I was nine. No one could beat

me. And, consequently, I could drink free Cokes all night and play the jukebox a bit. My mother and I had many friends in there. Sometimes we would go down with one of

her boyfriends, and sometimes we went down alone but al

ways ended up meeting somebody she knew. We could eat a

sandwich there as well?good thick Bar-BQ beef or ham sandwiches.

Jarvis Thurston, a nice man she went out with for a year, would sometimes take us out to Mary's Roadhouse, outside

the city limits, where they had a very wild Western band. It was very loud and there were usually at least a

couple of

fights before we got out of there, but there was a lot to watch

so I looked forward to it. Jarvis wanted to marry my mother, and my mother liked him quite a bit. She used to ask me how I would like to have Jarvis as a father. I could never

really imagine what a father was supposed to be. I tried to

give her an answer when she asked me what I thought of any of the men that came over to our house. It was easy to see

through some of them, especially since they always thought the key to my mother's heart was me and would make fools

of themselves trying to please me. One fool promised me a

motorcycle for my 10th birthday; even I knew that was fan

tasy.




I liked Jarvis and I felt sorry for him when my mother

said no to his proposals. Their relationship had arrived at

the point when she was either going to have to marry him or

they would have to break up. He was there late every night,

pleading with her, and sometimes he would even be asleep on the couch in the morning. I thought this was pretty

funny. Jarvis was really in love with my mother, you could

see it on his face when he slept. He was very large and the

couch was very small.

He said to me on one of these mornings in the summer of

1953: "Tommy, how would you like to go to camp?" I said,

"What camp?" And he said, "Well, it's called Rotary Camp.

It's not too far from here, just out highway 50 in Indepen

dence." "What do they do there?" I said. And he said,

"Well, they've got a swimming pool, and I'm sure they have

a baseball field, and plenty of woods to hike around in. And

there will be lots of kids your age, and your mother and I

thought you just might like it." I thought for a minute, and then said, "When is it?"

"Well, your mother and I could drive you out there today and pick you up in two weeks. And we'll come out and visit

you on Parents' Day." It seemed kind of sudden to me. I don't think I had ever

been away from home that long, certainly never without

someone else in the family. I didn't even know what the

Rotary Club was. But I got the picture. They wanted me to

go. "All right," I said, "I'll go."

That afternoon they dropped me off at the place with my

suitcase. It wasn't much to look at. It was just flat dry

ground with some tents on it. Nobody seemed very excited to

be there, including the counselors to whom my mother, Jar

vis, and I were introduced. Then Jarvis and my mother said

goodbye, and I immediately felt forsaken. I was put in a tent

with five other boys and told who my tent-captain or what

ever they called him would be. He didn't like me for some

reason right off, probably thought I was laughably timid or

something. I didn't like him, but only because of the teasing

way he spoke to me and whispered my name at night as a

joke. We were led rigidly through certain sports and events

each day. It was the rigidity that made me nervous. Just as I

was beginning to enjoy the baseball game or the swim or

whatever, there was a whistle in my ears telling me to quick throw that down and pick this up. This also made it difficult

to make any friends: 20 minutes to the second for each

meal, no talking after lights out. If the Army is a vacation,

then I was in the Army. In my spare minutes between the events of the day I

began to take an interest in the tarantula and scorpion popu

lations that thrived all over the campgrounds and in the sur

rounding woods. First we found them in our beds at night,

both tarantulas and scorpions. Though the tarantulas pre

sented a more powerfully hideous view to the eye, we were

told the scorpions were the ones to really watch out for. A

scorpion would be just as happy to sting you in your sleep, while the tarantula would either just cuddle up beside you or

pass on by. I got to be known right away for my fearlessness

with regard to tarantulas. I watched them and knew their

ways, knew how to handle them and, indeed, was not in the

least afraid after a while to let a perfectly virile tarantula

fully fanged walk across my naked shoulders and down my arm into my hand where I would stroke his hair affection

ately (and with caution). A photograph still exists, somewhere in all the boxes, of

me, naked to the waist, the skinny torso swarming with my

entire tribe of tarantulas, 20 strong, and an idiotic beatific

grin across my face. I would lure them out of their nests in

the ground by waving a match inside the lip of the hole, or

by sticking a straw down and teasing whomever was home.

They'd come out, fangs like tiny mastodon tusks flashing

angry threats at me. Of course they could jump (so can

scorpions), so there was a small amount of danger. But I was

armed with a pair of pincers made from a hanger, and I was

quick to pick them up, gently always. Then I would put

them in a cardboard box with chicken wire across the top,

and keep them alive and happy with Welch's grape jelly. I

lost my fondness for scorpions when I realized right away

that I could never let them walk on me. You could clip the

tips of the tarantulas' fangs in such a way as to not hurt them

?as long as they were prisoners anyway and would be

spoon-fed their Welch's grape jelly, which they all loved

madly?but you couldn't clip the stinger of the scorpion without killing him; that's what I figured out for myself at

the time, though I might have been wrong. And they were, if

not deadly in Missouri, mighty painful?have you on your

back for a week with a foot swollen up like a balloon. And

they never seemed to adapt to the jelly diet. They were

either listless or depressed; they all fell into these two

categories.

One morning we were told in the breakfast speeches that

it was Frank Buck Day and we should all go out there and

really work hard catching snakes so that our tent would get the most points and win. They would give out awards that

night after dinner around the swimming pool. They said our

parents had been invited and many of them would be there.

I must not have been listening because I didn't understand

what was meant by Frank Buck E)ay, and therefore none of

the rest of what was said made any sense to me. I was sup

posed to go out there and help my tent win, and then maybe

my mother would be there at the swimming pool tonight. I didn't want to ask anybody what we were supposed to

do because I didn't want to appear stupid. And I would

never have dared ask my tent-captain or whatever he was

because he would have certainly torn into me then with

some wicked ridicule. After a while outside, I could tell that

the thing to do was find a stick. Everybody was running all

over trying to find a certain kind of stick, a snake stick. I

heard two boys talking about the point system: ten points for

a rattlesnake, nine points for a copperhead, eight points for

a water moccasin. Five points for a bullhead or a blue racer.

Three points for a blacksnake. One for garter snakes and

ringnecks. And so on. I was beginning to see the picture. And it didn't take me long to realize I didn't want any part of

it. I didn't even care about the tent. I didn't really like any

of them, and I hated the tent-captain. And most of all, I was

frightened to death of poisonous snakes, which seemed to

me?despite my predilection for tarantulas?to be just good sense.

Frank Buck Day, "bring-'em-back-alive," was a walking

nightmare for me. There must have been fifty kids out there




in the woods screaming louder and louder "I got one!" "I got another copperhead!" I carried the stick and the gunny-sack and was leaping on tip-toes in order to spend as little time

as possible on the earth's surface with the deadly silent crea

tures menacing through the brush like liquid stilettoes. I

pretended to have very bad luck, mumbling disappointed

sighs when I let a four-foot copperhead slither over my shoe

without reaching down and grabbing him behind his head.

To my utter amazement no one got bitten that day. I was

relieved. And when the count came in, our tent was last.

They figured it all up before dinner. I didn't care very much. My tent mates, rightly, said I was no help at all. The

other five guys averaged around 32 points?that's about

three poisonous snakes each with maybe a blue racer thrown

in. I had three ringnecks at a point each. And to make it

worse, these ringnecks of mine were only about two inches

each, incredibly nice to hold in your palm. Like kittenish

worms. But not worth spit on your Frank Buck scale; that

was made very clear to me by our tent-captain, the taunter.

We had to sit at our regular tables in the dining hall. If

our parents had come we wouldn't know until after dinner.

Some kids were able to look around and catch sight of their

parents across the hall eating with the counselors and ex

change waves. I couldn't see my mother and was trying to

accept the fact that maybe she hadn't been able to come:

either she had to work late, or maybe Jarvis had taken her

out dancing or to Mary's Roadhouse.

We filed outside to the pool area as soon as we had

finished our Jell-o. The ones who were going to get the

awards were excited. The rest of us just accepted this as

another event. My tent-captain, Allen, who played sports in

high school, pulled me aside when I came out of the dining hall.

"Come here, Woods," he said, "We're going to dress

you up." I didn't know what he was talking about, but I

knew I wasn't going to like it.

"What for?" I asked.

"Because, Woods, old boy, you have been elected

'Queen of Frank Buck Day.' "

I didn't want to bring it up now, but I still wasn't sure I

knew who Frank Buck was, and what was the idea behind

this Frank Buck Day I had just?almost?gotten through. Allen and two other tent-captains took me behind the gar dener's shed and started dressing me up in makeshift girl's

clothing and putting lipstick on my mouth and other things on my eyes and cheeks and a mop parted down the middle

on my head. I saw nothing funny about it, but knew I was

trapped. Now I hoped my mother and Jarvis weren't out

there, though I had wanted to see them very badly before

this new turn of events.

I could hear the leader of the camp announcing the tent

awards and then the individual awards with his bullhorn over the pool. There was applause and laughter. ". . .And

Charlie Paddock wins the first place award for the individual with the most poisonous snakes: Charlie brought back 12

copperheads, four water moccasins, and one rattler!" It was

amazing. I knew Charlie Paddock and he was just an ordi

nary guy. Why does he get first place and I end up 'Queen of Frank Buck Day'?

Just when Allen and another guy had finished screwing a

pair of dangling earrings on me, I heard the camp-leader

saying, "And now folks, there is one last award that we give

each year, and that is to the camper that catches the least

snakes in our Frank Buck Day 'Bring 'em Back Alive'

snake-catching competition. We call that award our 'Queen of Frank Buck Day Award!'

" There was tremendous laugh

ter. Allen grabbed me roughly under my arm and dragged me into the lights around the diving-board where the camp

leader was standing with his bullhorn.

"And our 'Queen of Frank Buck Day' this year is . . .

Miss Tommy Woods! who caught all by /.erself three itsy

bitsy ringnecks, about this long ..." (he held up his thumb

and forefinger a fourth of an inch apart). The parents and

the campers were really laughing very hard now. The camp ers were yelling things. "Come on up here, Queen Tommy," the camp-leader said, standing on the diving-board. "You

aren't afraid of water, too, are you?"

"No," I said.

"We have a prize for you; yes, we do," he said.

I had on high heels, so it was hard to walk. They were

too big and I kept threatening to crash to either side with

each step forward I took.

When I got up on the diving-board with the camp-leader I was in such a state of embarrassment and humiliation I

was afraid to look at anyone, afraid to see if my mother and

Jarvis had come. The camp-leader was saying some funny

things which I couldn't hear, and then someone came up

behind me and handed him one end of the most enormous

blacksnake I have ever seen. It was six feet long and twelve

inches around in the middle. Allen and the camp-leader stretched the snake out to its full length in front of the audi

ence, which responded with appropriate sighs and gasps.

Then the camp-leader said something into the bullhorn I

didn't hear and they began to wrap the snake?it was, I

remember he said, the camp's mascot of many years?

around my neck. When it was wrapped around several times

Allen handed me its tail to hold in my right hand and the

camp-leader gave me its head to hold in the other. There

was a burst of appreciation from the parents' gallery. And

then Allen and the camp-leader pushed me off the diving board into the deep end of the pool.

I expected the snake to strangle me, but apparently it

had been through this enough times to be interested only in

disentangling itself from my neck and saving itself. By the

time I surfaced, white with fear, my make-up running and

my mop-wig turned around sideways, everyone seemed to

have forgotten about the Coronation ceremonies. They were

standing in threes and fours discussing the wonderful oppor

tunities the camp offered. The campers were giving their

parents hotpads and lariats they had made for them, and the

parents had Kool-Aid packages and Fritos for their sons.

I just wanted to creep through them as inconspicuously as possible and get back to the tent to change into dry jeans

and scrub the lipstick off my face. I heard my name called. "Tommy." My mother came up

through the crowd to me and I felt ashamed to be standing there in that outfit, pained that she had seen me made a fool

of out there in front of everyone. I desperately didn't want

her to make a joke about it.

"That was terrible," she said.

I couldn't say anything. I was holding back.

"Where's Jarvis?" I said.

"He couldn't come."

"Aren't you going to marry him?" I said.




IVA y mother married Dick Murray, she said, because he

was a young widower with a son (seven years younger than

myself), and on his way up as a salesman for Monroe Matic

Shock Absorbers; that gaudy blue and yellow company Ford,

with frantic hype all over it, reminded me of him.

The boy, BillyBob, was emotionally retarded, and no

wonder; Dick, the father, had no tolerance for anyone less

powerful and perfect than himself. But he was a liar and

fraud. He talked about the army; it didn't take us long to

find out he meant high school ROTC. His stardom in bas

ketball, baseball and football, too?all lies, a sandlot nim

bler unliked in high school. But now he was making it. How

his first wife died, we didn't know. BillyBob was six months

old; he cried one night, she got up?pretty 22-year-old? and died. The cause of death never determined.

My mother caught Dick, who traveled four or five days a

week, in the oldest game, not even through the first year,

with lipstick on his collar. That did it, she'd never trust him

after that. She was cold. And I didn't like him already. At

first I thought it would be fine to have someone to play ball

with, but he played with an anger in him that I felt?a dif

ference of 100 pounds between us. I was good at baseball

and swimming and nothing else. Dick couldn't swim so I

became a champion in the next couple years.

We moved from the house on 49th right away. I had

never understood where the house came from, how we got it.

Then I heard my mother and Dick talking one night: she

wanted to keep the house and buy another; she said the

house belonged to me, Mrs. Woods had left it to me. But it

wouldn't be big enough, Dick said. They could pay me back

later when I was grown and would need it.

I was in the middle of seventh grade and was sorry to

leave my friends. In the new school I felt I was an entirely

different person. People saw me differently, and I guess I

encouraged it. I was frustrated with the new life and took my

confusion out on shoplifting sprees and gambling at school.

At home, too, I took up the terrible practice of shooting certain kinds of birds?the starling and bluejays that preyed on the cardinals, bluebirds, and doves.

I found as many excuses as I could to visit the old

neighborhoods, my Grandmother Clinton's on 47th and

friends on 49th. But it was different; I had always loved my

family and suddenly the new life hadn't the same fun. My

mother found herself pregnant and this brought on her resig

nation, as well as her contempt: she had no way out of a

doomed marriage, she thought, and would hold on without

love until she could manage. We dreaded when Dick

wouldn't go on the road. The screaming in the house, the

threat of violence at all times, made life grim. But I could

get away now and then, and I did. I was developing an

image of black leather jacket and motorcycle boots.

To avoid the tensions and fights of the livingroom I

would sit in my room at nights throwing dice against the

wall, trying to understand patterns.

Vacations were always to the Ozarks, one place or

another on the huge man-made lake. In those days it was not

what you could call commercialized. We stayed in barren

little cabins that were infested with scorpions. BillyBob was

stung one time on the foot as he got into bed. We thought he

might die, but the swelling went down in a week and he

could walk again. I enjoyed looking for arrowheads and had

found over fifty down there on different trips. We fished,

rented boats, cooked out. Dick directed every activity. He

sipped beer from early morning, though I never really be

lieved he cared about drinking. It was just the way he was

with everything?the few friends he had in the business he

didn't really care about, certainly not if it meant getting a

deal away from them. And the money, that was hard to fig ure out: he'd kill for it, but it seemed he only wanted it in

the first place to intimidate others. I guess it was power,

which he equated with class, that he wanted most. And it

was class, of almost any conceivable kind, that he had none

of. Standing out by the barbecue, turning the steaks or ham

burgers, he looked absolutely alone sometimes, like what he

was: a stranger to himself and to us.

Amy was born, a small frail baby with underdeveloped

respiratory system. We worried about her the first year.

More than once we found her turning blue, unable to

breathe, and had to slap hell out of her. My mother had

tried to love BillyBob, but she was bothered with his slowness?no one called him retarded then; he was a sad

boy, often turned in on his own thoughts, slow to respond and clumsy. Dick would alternately brag that his son was

going to be the greatest quarterback of the day and beat him

mercilessly for dropping a piece of food from his plate. The

boy jumped whenever his father tried to touch him. Dick was three years younger than my mother. He was

an only child. His father was a plumber in the old neighbor hoods where we had lived. Mr. and Mrs. Murray were gen

tle, affable people who got by modestly, read the newspa

pers, and listened to the radio at night. They tacitly under

stood their son's quick talent for cruelty. Dick's fortune as an automotive parts salesman varied

greatly in the 7V__ years that the marriage survived. He was

"Salesman of the Year" the first year; but later, for years,

money was the source of many, many ear-bursting battles.

He was always the bigshot even when his big Buicks and

Pontiacs were in imminent danger of repossession. He ar

rogantly bought three and four expensive suits when we

didn't have enough to eat. He had to have the best in his

business, he said; image was everything. But he wasn't like

able, finally, even to his own peers in shock absorbers or

spark plugs. The fights mounted in severity from year to year. My

mother couldn't go out of the house for a week while she

waited for the black eyes and swellings to disappear. Dick

grew louder, more obnoxious. It was unpleasant to shop with

him as he invariably started a shouting contest with a clerk

or manager. We all dreaded holidays, knowing he would be

home more than usual and that everything would be ruined

by one of his arbitrary regimens, instant wrapping-paper

pickup on Christmas while he drank beer and belched or

ders on his back on the couch. BillyBob always did some

thing wrong; he broke his new toy or wasn't paying strict

attention to instructions.

I certainly wasn't immune to blows. Dick sensed increas

ingly that I lacked feeling for him?not that he offered any

himself. I felt sorry for him at times, thought how awful it

would be to be him. I knew I would get away from it in a few

years. But I worried about my mother and Amy and Bil

lyBob. BillyBob was getting worse. Finally his teachers at

the elementary school wouldn't allow him to continue in

public school. By the time Amy was four she was beginning




to reflect the constant tension in her home: she sat in a

corner and pulled out her eyelashes and was starting on her

hair. My mother was taking tranquilizers and drinking

enough to calm her "nerves." Her three sisters, who still

lived close by in Kansas City, listened at length to the hor ror stories she had to tell. She hadn't a cent to her name;

Dick Murray didn't even have enough to support himself.

Amy was too young to leave even if my mother could get a

job. And nobody knew what would happen to BillyBob if a

divorce did occur. He was getting torn apart, perhaps un

beknownst to himself: Dick didn't want him, wouldn't know what to do with him except give him back to his parents as

he had done after his first wife's death. And my mother felt

selfishly that Dick Murray had taken enough of a toll on her

family: BillyBob, now under psychologists' care, was not

hers.

She was afraid for her life; I also thought Dick was

capable of killing her. His failings as a salesman were taken

out on her in brutal beatings where it was obvious he no

longer had control of what he was doing. He never showed

remorse; his pride wouldn't allow that. When I tried to inter

fere I was given the same.

After some of these fights Dick wouldn't return for three

or four weeks. He had girlfriends all over the four state area

he worked. In the last couple of years he was away twice for

six-month periods. My mother would find ways to get money

out of him and she took a job herself in a bank nearby after

Amy was in school. I was more interested in girls and cars

than I was in school and sports. I hung around the drive-ins

every night with a gang called "The Zoo Club." When my mother and I talked about Dick it was with

single-minded hatred. We had talked about murdering him; it was strange how natural the subject seemed. We knew

neither of us would ever get a day in prison if caught. There

were now dozens of friends and neighbors who could testify to his inhumanity. I had once pulled a gun on Dick, his own

.25 automatic, in the midst of a particularly fierce lashing of

my mother. I had stood there in the doorway of my room,

watching the beating for what seemed like ten or fifteen minutes. I went to his dresser and got the gun, hesitated,

and removed the clip; then walked down the stairs into the

livingroom and pointed it a few inches from his temple: "Get out!" I shouted bravely with my equalizer.

The plan that seemed best involved his company car. He

drove like a maniac on the highway, 95 or 100, and spoke

with reverence?the only time he found that tone

appropriate?of the martyrs, those brave traveling salesmen

who gave their lives to bridge abutments, etc., in the line of

duty. Over coffee in the morning my mother and I discussed

the merits of loosening lug-nuts. Let him die for his cause;

surely there was some sympathy behind that conception. As

for protection, we finally took out an injunction forbidding him to step foot on the property. It had been advised by everyone. But Dick wouldn't be stopped: he cut his way

through the screens one night and managed to jimmy the

new lock we had put on. My mother woke with a shudder at

him standing over her bed in the dark; she screamed for me

and Dick laughed, said he just wanted to say hello. He had

thought I was away.

The divorce action seemed to last forever, during which

time my mother's emotional disintegration culminated in a

drunken, fiery crash at noon in downtown Kansas City. She

was thought dead at first but was revived by a policeman.

\Jne day in March when I was eighteen I was sitting in a

graveyard in Pittsburg, Kansas, and realized that no one in

my family had ever visited my father's grave in Belgium. I didn't even know where in Belgium.

The first assumption of his death had been in an article in the Kansas City Star, September 4, 1945, 18 months after

his disappearance. It said: "Lieut. M. Virgil Woods of the

army air force, who has been reported missing in action

since April 11, 1944, has been presumed by the War de

partment to have been killed. Neither the wife nor the mother has given up hope that Woods will return." The de

cision to go to Belgium came from a combination of changes in my life, though I don't think I connected them con

sciously at that time, that afternoon. I had been in compul

sory ROTC that year, my freshman year in college. The

whole experience had been difficult for me, resulting in

harsh punishment, sometimes of a violent nature. We

viewed many war documentary films that depicted correct

and incorrect maneuvers and procedures. My mother's

marriage was breaking up back in Kansas City. And I had done something for which I felt guilt: I had legally changed my name from Woods to Murray. I had been called Murray ever since our move to Prairie Village, Kansas, a new sub

urb of Kansas City, in 1956. And so I rationalized that the

legal act now was practical. My names had caused confusion

for years. But I hated Dick Murray and loved the memory,

the instilled memory, of my father. Also, I had started to write poetry that year, my freshman year in college, and

somehow my father was more on my mind than he had been

for several years. He was never far from my mind. I knew so

absolutely precious little! The entire range of our family was

dedicated to his memory, but facts, descriptions, never

emerged?only a vague misty praise. "Your father was a

wonderful man." "Your father would be so proud of you." "You look more like your father every day." My grand mother even absentmindedly called me Virgil occasionally.

I never felt that it was appropriate to ask for these "hard

facts" that nagged at me. Was he or was he not actually found? It was years later that anything of this sort came out.

The government was paying my way through college to

the tune of $110 a month. That was enough in Pittsburg,




Kansas. But I didn't have anything left over. I called my

mother and told her that I wanted to go to Belgium in June. I

had been told from childhood that I had a $6000 trust

fund?I never really knew who had established it for me, my

father or my father's mother. I wanted to see if I could get a

small part of it now for this good cause. My mother agreed to

look into it for me, contact the lawyer, the legal guardian of

my inheritance.

The $6000 turned out to be slightly less than $600.

Lawyers' fees. I could have it all now if I wanted. There was

obviously something fishy but I had little sense of money

and $600 was something, it was enough. I booked passage

on the S.S. Gro?te Bier, sailing from Hoboken to Rotterdam.

The voyage was six days. I took a train to Paris and

contacted a woman with whom I had corresponded at the

American Battle Monuments Commission at 20 rue Quentin

Bauchart. She was a quite elderly lady who was extremely warm and helpful. She was shocked and amused at the de

crepitude of the hotel I had chosen to stay in. We took long

walks through the city. On several occasions she brought me

small sacks of groceries that I could get by on in my room.

I had around $200 left after the round-trip ticket. I de

cided to spend $65 of it on a Solex, a small motorbike espe

cially common in France. I left Paris for Liege, Belgium,

slept in a field one night, and was there the next evening. It

was too late to call the cemetery, the Ardennes Cemetery, 12 miles from Liege in the village of Neuville-en-Condroz.

I sat in my hotel and looked over the literature I had on

the Cemetery. "The cemetery, 50V2 acres in extent, contains the graves

of 5,250 of our military dead, many of whom died in the

so-called 'Battle of the Bulge.' Their headstones are aligned in straight rows which take the form of a huge Greek cross

on a lawn framed by masses of trees. Nearer the entrance, to

the south of the burial area, is the memorial, a rectangular

gray stone structure containing a small chapel, three large

maps of inlaid marbles, 24 panels depicting combat and

supply activities, and other ornamental features including the insignia of the major United States units in Northwest

Europe. Two of the maps depict operations of the American

Armed Forces, the third commemorates the Services of Sup

ply in the European Theater. On the exterior is some large

scale sculpture. Along the sides, inscribed in granite slabs,

are the names of 462 of the Missing who gave their lives in

the service of their Country, but whose remains were never

recovered or identified."

A man from the Cemetery picked me up in the morning. I was suddenly afraid. I was intent, nervous, sad and grim,

all at the same time, and even considered the possibility of

backing out, asking to be let out of the car. I could find my

way back to the hotel somehow. I could lie to my mother,

say I had seen it. I was very distracted and had trouble

chatting with my host.

In the memorial, he asked if I had any questions. Would

I like to see the flight plan for the mission on which my father was killed? I had never thought about such a thing; it

was too much "of this world." I didn't know, so I said yes, I

guess so, when what was really preoccupying me was his

actual grave; that is what I had traveled all this way to see.

The man had prepared for my visit and had some very

hard-core information. Eight aircraft were lost in the raid on

Stettin, the largest loss yet sustained by the 92nd Bombard

ment Group; 20 aircraft returned safely of the 28 dis

patched. Six aircraft of the 325th Squadron that flew as low

squadron to the high group were lost to savage and persis tent fighter and flak attack. The entire mission was flown at

an altitude of about 15,000 feet and required 11 hours to

complete. Crew members described it as one of the "rough

est" in memory. Enemy fighters outnumbered friendly ones,

and the flak was accurate, varying from moderate to intense.

Bombing results were good.

My father's aircraft was believed to have exploded about

12 miles north of Brunswick, an early victim of the high

group in the fighter attack.

The evidence of his death suddenly seemed incontrover

tible. Did my mother know this? Did everybody know it? I studied the maps in a haze.

The man asked me if I was ready to be led to the grave.

I told him I would prefer to find it by myself. "When would you like to be driven back to your hotel?"

he inquired. I told him I would meet him back in the memo

rial building in three hours if that was agreeable.

Fifty acres of white symmetrical crosses; it seemed vast,

"as far as the eye could see." Avenues of crisp white cros

ses, thousands of statistics and stories. I felt like a small

insect crawling through a dream-city; how perfectly

trimmed, how beyond reproach, what a self-sufficient entity.

There was perfect silence. It was a beautiful, clear day, not

cold or warm. What was it Harry Truman had said in his

letter of consolation? He stands in the unbroken line of pat

riots who have dared to die that freedom might live, and

grow, and increase its blessings. Freedom lives, and through

it, he lives?in a way that humbles the undertakings of most

men. What did he mean? What possible excuse?

I was in no hurry to find my father here. Death had

leveled the worth of all these. And, besides, I knew he

wasn't there. It was just a government's way to keep the

records straight.

Still, when I did find it, there was a tremendous rush of

chemistry: I had never been this close, in some inexplicable

way, to touching him. I wept and lay down on the grave,

falling asleep there as the sun came out and deepened my dreams. I saw my father in his B-17 still flying there "at

about 15,000 ft." And then I came into view in some kind of

plane, gaining on my father until I passed him, as in a car

toon, with scarf and goggles, waving. Why was I so sad?

Why did I suddenly feel so old? When I awoke I took a color

snapshot of the cross which said Michael V. Woods, lLt 325

Bomb Sq. 92 Bomb GP (H) Missouri Apr 11 1944. No birth date.

When I returned to Kansas City my mother and I talked

at length about the cemetery. I didn't mention what I

learned from the man who escorted me at Neuville-en

Condroz. Instead, when I was alone, I sought out the old box

of photos, letters, clippings. They always seemed new to me:

there was a world there I could never finish understanding. But he was some letter writer, eight written to his bride in

the last week of his life alone. The words were simple, striv

ing for cheerfulness and optimism, and overflowing with

declarations of love. In the last few hours of his life he

wrote, "Gosh honey I'll be the happiest man in the world

when this damn war is over and I get to come home to you

and Tommy. So help me! I'm never going to have you out of

my sight again." D




Documents

The Route as Briefed